, 1 \í? [b , flJ!)(jfjJ -,;, \ I / ^ \ 1 ' I , I, ,I I ',1' 1 \1 'I , . ,- -' - ,''', I \\\ \.'- ,< ' , -.( rviU ) k ' '., I{() V-. Ow.'t. '/ 1 \,' ',I /1: ..': 121') A I (eU I 1 :', \)\)tS , , 1 , " I I '.' . IN U l5 "! " ',' ,'< 1';@ @r 6%V! i ,": UI \\' I ,>, II,!.' : U)' 'PAUL /'J\c.SPRAIN]I :1' , : 1':' I' ; / , 1 , I \ I ' l i:':<:/ '" ' if " ". ' / n li':j! i, .', \ , \ i{' \ .. r 1 I, . .i", ,;' I, .. ..,.. /, 1 ' r;; / H - , I '. { J \ \ ' 1 \ \ ":' / ( ,C '. -- \ Z; ' I '. ' )., \ I' I I I' ,( , 1 I' . /' ',., \' \ , .' i :- :ç :/' ^',' ,) l i t (9 r (f4-- , ::' I \ . \ \" ,. "t!.[ 'III '/ I \ ! . . , '\ I : : -= ,Y \ '1 \'ì' \ -, 1 I "" _ I' 1 \ . I . ,(. I " 'I:: --- - ..... I ", " \ '\ \\t.\.'i" \Ç\ \\ t 1 ' .,.. / ' 1 I , ^ 1 \ I' 1 \ 1 \ I , 1 I \ 1 1\ ,1 , , I 1 , " ' 'I' r a;r \ \ for their art collection, in which a Dali hung between two Goyas. He uphol- stered blocky chairs and sofas in white linen, black leather, or white fake fur. Frank's motto for his spare rectilinear style was "The last touch of elegance is elimination." "It was all very white, naked, strange," Abbé Mugnier, a priest popular in Paris salons, noted. Marie- Laure's personal aesthetics were in ac- cord with her stark décor: she wore mainly Chanel, principally the couturi- ere's tidy little suits, of which she had about forty versions, most of them in black. Mter the N oailleses finished decorat- ing their Paris house, they began to look for an architect for a villa theywanted to build in the South of France, in Hyères. Marie- Laure was pregnant with their first child, Laure, when they travelled to Germany to seek out Mies van der Rohe, who was too busy to take them on. They then visited Le Corbusier, whose di- dactic personality put them off So they settled on a young French modernist, Robert Mallet-Stevens, the first French , \ 1 \. 1 , 1 , , I I . 1 1 , \ _ __..-- - o J - - I' I ' I \. , I \ I I \ 1 \ / / > , / I \ / \ architect to have seriously studied the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. His cre- ation, a forty-bedroom house made of reinforced concrete, looked like a Cub- ist cruise ship. "Innumerable rooms, rectilinear, uni- colored" was the way the painter Jean Hugo described the house in his mem- oirs. "Like the blocks of a child's game tumbling one into the other, forming a strangely obscure labyrinth in which guests constantly lost their way." Each of the monastic guest rooms had its own flowered terrace. There was a Cubist gar- den with block-shaped shrubbery and sculptures commissioned from Brancusi and Giacometti, who later made several portrait busts of Marie- Laure. The Noailleses may have been the first family in Europe to have a covered swim- ming pool, an atWetic center, and a per- sonal trainer; their gymnasium was outfit- ted with parallel bars, punching bags, and volleyball nets, and was overseen by a blond gym teacher named M. T aré. All guests found striped swimsuits and exer- cise pants in their rooms. The house be- \ 1 " J / \ I I 1 \ 1 , J ,.t , ----=-== ==-- ,I 1 , \ ' .L _ J \ - , { I , 1 \. 1 I' , , \ J , , I , \ \ I \ \ , \ came the place where intellectuals culti- vated their bodies. Even André Gide, an austere man in his sixties, found himself playing volleyball, "more or less naked," he wrote in his diary. "I hope you'll do a gymnastics workout with me every morn- ing," Charles wrote to Buñuel before a visit, according to BenaÏm. "f m not hope- ful about the athleticism of the others in the group" (Auric, Cocteau, Christian Bérard) . D ecades later, Marie-Laure liked to ask new friends this question: "At what age did you become yourself?" She easily fixed the year in her own life: 1929, when she was twenty-seven. Sev- eral things happened that year which made everything change for her. Having installed Paris's first private screening room in their house, the N o ail- leses became interested in avant-garde cinema. (They had commissioned a short film from Jacques Manuel about the high jinks at Hyères, called "Biceps and Jew- els.") They were extremely taken with "Un Chien Andalou," and Charles be- gan to finance a film each year as a birth- day present for Marie-Laure, includ- ing "Blood of a Poet" and "The Golden Age," the collaboration between Buñuel and Dali. "Marie- Laure took exceptional plea- sure in shocking people," her friend Ber- nard Minoret told me, "and through these two men's work she created a sensational brouhaha." The Noailleses gave Buñuel two hundred and sixty thousand francs to shoot "The Golden Age," and he moved into their house at Hyères to write the script. Each evening, Buñuel would read what he had written to his patrons, and, according to his autobiography, "My Last Sigh," they found the work "exquisite and delightful." InJulyof1930, the Noailleses hosted an early screening at their home. In the film, after some Surrealist shenan- igans-cows settling into beds, the hero- ine sucking on the big toe of a statue of the Pope, bishops being thrown out of windows-the action moves to the cas- tle where the infamous Duc de Blangis, the protagonist of Sade's "120 Days of Sodom," has been holding his orgies. When the Duke emerges from the castle, the audience sees that he is Jesus Christ. Buñuel wrote that his intention had been to make viewers "redden with shamè' by mocking all that was sacred-the family,